


Rest Be Sent to Hell

by missmollyetc



Category: Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue
Genre: M/M, alternate version available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 04:51:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmollyetc/pseuds/missmollyetc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If the Red Ranger powers draw from an accepted pathway to the Morphin Grid, and the Titanium Ranger power connects to a different aspect of the same source, then how dissimilar do the men using them have to be?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rest Be Sent to Hell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kiirotsubasa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiirotsubasa/gifts).



> Written for [](http://kiirotsubasa.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://kiirotsubasa.dreamwidth.org/)**kiirotsubasa** , for the prompt: "Carter the perfectionist can't help but struggle with the fact that he wasn't able to use the Titanium powers, but Ryan can. This causes tension between the two men that Ryan can't quite understand. What happens to bring them together to make them such good friends?"

Carter’s head hit the bulkhead a second after Ryan’s hand cupped it, ragged fingernails dragging in his hair. He gasped, arms frozen and up at his sides, as Ryan rocked into him, flicking his tongue against the roof of Carter’s mouth, and slid his left hand up the back of Carter’s uniform shirt. Ryan’s lips pulled at the corner of Carter’s mouth, coaxing him to open even as his grip tightened in Carter’s hair. Carter’s hands shook and spasmed into fists; his hips pushed forward into Ryan’s, who smiled into Carter's mouth and damn near purred as he pulled an inch away.

“Isn’t this better than asking questions?” Ryan asked, nipping Carter’s bottom lip.

Carter blinked, and took a shivering breath. “I…” he swallowed. “Wait a minute, _wait—_ ”

He pushed his knuckles into Ryan’s sides and leaned away, glancing up at the dusty emergency lights lining the bulkhead. He swallowed, and looked down just in time to see Ryan’s eyes fix on his mouth. The trouble with voicing your suspicions about your commanding officer’s long-lost formerly-evil son, apparently, was that it led to tracking him down through two locker rooms, the engineers' bay, and then finally, surprise make outs in the maintenance alley that curved around Miss Fairweather’s lab. Carter shook his head and Ryan’s hand fell to the nape of his neck.

“What?” Ryan asked softly, tilting his head and stretching his faintly tanned neck to the side.

Carter licked his lips; Ryan’s knee pushed between his own before pulling back. Carter coughed, and took a breath. “I came down here because you walked off when I asked you a direct question,” he said, deepening his voice.

Ryan nodded. “And then I kissed you,” he said, fingertips tracing loops and circles up Carter’s spine. “Are we all caught up now?”

He dragged his fingers down to the small of his back, and Carter arched. “Ye—no,” he said. “I had a point, damn it!”

Ryan snorted; the edges of his open mouth curled up. “I’ve been trying to get to it.”

Carter froze for a second, and then shook his head hard enough to dislodge Ryan’s hand. Ryan sighed, and let him go, tucking both hands in his own pockets. Carter rubbed the back of his left fist against his stomach, and then over his mouth. His cock twitched against his uniform pants, sending little shivers of heat up through his belly.

“How can you have the Titanium power?” he asked, again, if…a little more hoarsely. “How can you stand to even touch it?”

He dug his knuckles into his stomach, and told himself he wasn’t cold and he wasn’t in pain, it was just the memory of those things, of slapping on the morpher and suddenly drowning in a torrent of _wrong_. Ryan shrugged, eyebrows rising as he pursed his mouth.

“Don’t give me that,” Carter said, coming off the clammy wall. “If you’re going to keep using them in the field, then I need to know—”

“Why me, and not you?” Ryan asked, smirking.

Carter ground his teeth. “If you’re injuring yourself in some misguided—if this is your way of proving yourself to us, then—”

Ryan chuckled, and Carter’s mouth snapped shut. Ryan swayed on his feet, and sucked in his cheeks, ducking his head to laugh, and the sound recoiled off the metal walls to crumple on the floor. Ryan’s slim body, broad shoulders and barely a curl of waist, angled towards him, like always. Every time Carter looked up, or almost looked away, it seemed like Ryan’s body was stretching towards him, keeping him focused. His cock pressed against his pants, and Carter tried to fill his mind with cold thoughts: the water outside the Aquabase, the first blast from his station's fire hoses, the time in high school he’d accidentally gotten locked in the school’s freezer.

“Do you remember,” Ryan asked, looking up with too-bright eyes, “what I asked you when that minion was giving me my physical?”

“His name is Mosely.”

Ryan shrugged, and raised his eyebrows.

“I remember,” Carter said, rubbing his tongue over his teeth. “You asked me if I…”

“Knelt at my father’s feet, or stood at his back,” Ryan finished for him, and took a swaying step closer. He raised his chin, twisting so Carter could see the line of his throat; he was always doing that. He was starting to see Ryan’s throat in his dreams, for fuck’s sake.

“It was nonsense, you’d just gotten hit in the head.”

“I wanted to know if I could step over you, or fit myself around you instead,” Ryan said. “Because he gave you the chance first, didn’t he? Handed you the Titanium Morpher and watched you fall apart.”

“The preliminary trial was a failure,” Carter said, shoulders tensing.

Ryan lifted his hands, and paused when Carter stiffened. “But you said at his back,” he murmured, eyes flickering up and down Carter’s face. “And it was true.”

“I’m still the red ranger,” Carter said, knocking Ryan’s hands out of his face. “What did you think; I was going to be thrown out the docking hatch?”

“Why not?” Ryan asked, suddenly and incredibly still.

Carter opened his mouth, and then closed it. “Because we’re…”

“Human?” Ryan whispered.

Carter nodded quickly, pressing his lips together. And there it was, the thing that always tripped Ryan up, that kept him out of crew poker games and drove him to research ancient lore in the bowels of the Aquabase. How very human Ryan was in face and heart and blood, until the moment he turned, and something deadly and curious and broken stared out of his face. He’d backhanded Mosely across the room for touching Dana’s arm to get her attention, and still didn’t see the problem.

Ryan shrugged again, and turned his palms to the ceiling. “It’s a learning process,” he said, smiling that terrifyingly calm smile. “I’m just trying to fit in.”

Carter snorted, and Ryan stepped forward. “All right, all right,” he said. “Because you stand at my father’s back—” Carter frowned, and Ryan’s smile grew a hint of teeth. “—and command me in the field, I’ll tell you.”

He moved into Carter’s space, and grabbed the hand Carter placed between them. Carter felt Ryan’s strangely calloused fingertips scrape along the veins in his wrist as Ryan brought his hand to the top of his t-shirt. The cotton bunched softly under Carter’s palm; it was a cast off he’d tossed in the pile of things they’d all donated until Ryan could get on the payroll. Ryan slid his hand up to his own neck, into the curve of skin where Carter’s thumb and forefinger met.

“You can’t use them,” Ryan said, licking the corner of his mouth when Carter twitched, “because you’ve never had to learn how to keep yourself apart.”

Carter frowned, and flexed his wrist in Ryan’s grip. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Ryan smoothed his hand down the length of Carter’s arm to his elbow and dropped away; Carter fingers tightened at his throat. He grinned, and Carter’s skin prickled.

“I bet the red ranger powers make you feel like the best you’ve ever been,” Ryan said. “Miss Fairweather keeps talking about how you’re the pinnacle of success, the curve we’re all matched against. It drives Joel nuts, you know that?”

“She just means I bonded well,” Carter said, feeling his eyebrows draw together. “It’s—I’m good, yes, but I’m not—”

“You’re the destroyer of nightmares and monsters,” Ryan said. “It takes everything you are and elevates it, doesn’t it?”

“Not…exactly,” Carter said, swallowing. “I do feel…good.”

Ryan stepped forward, into Carter’s hand, and shivered as a red patch of skin bloomed beneath Carter’ thumb. Carter couldn’t stop watching.

“How do you improve upon perfection, then?” Ryan asked, and Carter felt Ryan’s hands at his waist again, sliding around. “You make it work for you. You make a deal.”

Carter closed his mouth, and swallowed heavily. “No, that’s…it didn’t feel like that, it felt like—”

“The morpher wanted something from you? It wanted to carve its place in your bones and use you? The Titanium Power is a weapon. Trust me, it takes one to know one,” Ryan said.

He shut his mouth and Carter realized they were inches apart, that he’d been pulling Ryan towards him by the hand on his neck. Ryan’s pointed nose nudged the side of his face, lips a breath from his skin.

“You’re not a weapon,” Carter said, his eyelids lowered.

“I’ve been rearranged,” Ryan said, licking the edge of Carter’s ear. “It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last, and the best thing to do when something you want, wants something from you, is to make sure you keep a part of what you like behind very—” He bit the lobe of his ear, and slipped his fingers down the front of Carter’s pants, ratcheting down the zipper with the back of his hand. “—clear boundaries. Every pain has a purpose.”

Carter gasped, and rocked into Ryan’s palm. Ryan’s face was pressed into the side of his head, breath hot and quick. He wrapped his leg around the back of Carter’s knee and leaned them both back against the wall. Carter tightened his hand, thumbnail slicing along the waves of Ryan’s pulse, and Ryan whined, high in his throat.

“I like when you watch me,” he said, shimmying his loose pants lower on his frame, and rubbing against Carter’s hip. “When you keep Dana and I close, do you even—”

He broke off with a laugh, and Carter twisted his head to kiss him, rutting into Ryan’s hand so hard his pants slipped down his hips to his ankles. Ryan growled into his mouth, tilting back and sucking Carter’s tongue in sharp, short bursts. He shuddered, and Ryan twisted his hand around his cock, faster and tighter, curling them both together into a knot of bitten off curses and pounding blood. Carter squeezed his eyes shut, wrapping his other hand around Ryan’s back to keep him close. Ryan froze and held against his side, then sank into him, biting the side of Carter’s neck.

“I’m at your back,” Ryan murmured, which…nonsense, it made no sense, but Carter gasped at the thought, eyes popping open on the rush of oxygen.

“I don’t, you’re on my team, at my side. I don’t want a shield,” he babbled, and Ryan’s hand tightened over the head of Carter’s cock. He growled into Carter’s cheek, and Carter twisted in his grip, shot through with adrenaline-spiked heat, and shaking between Ryan’s hands. “I want you close,” he finally spit out, and grabbed for Ryan’s back, catching on the waistband of his pants. “I want you to fight _with_ me.”

“It’s a deal,” Ryan said, and pumped his cock, shaking against Carter’s hip, and it shouldn’t have been enough, but Ryan was always going on about how _warm_ they all were, how their skin felt so soft, like a cat with a new toy. Carter could already feel a wet patched where his t-shirt was rucked above his waist. Ryan’s hand corkscrewed up and down his shaft, and held on as Carter groaned and came in a shaking, stomach-flip burst that died down in throbbing aftershocks.

“This world isn’t so strange,” Ryan said, humming a little. “We can do great things here.”

He felt Ryan’s hands push back underneath his t-shirt, and willed his own to wrap around Ryan’s back. His head fell to Ryan’s neck, lips tasting something too salty to be sweat. He made a sound, licking his lips, and Ryan shushed him.

Carter pulled back, angling his face to meet Ryan’s eyes. “Yes, we can,” he said, and held Ryan’s eyes until he looked away.

They cleaned up separately, and Carter took the moment outside of Ryan’s laser-like focus to breathe deeply and smooth his hair back from his face. This could work, he just had to be… He snorted. He just had to not be the kind of dick who forgot Ryan didn’t have twenty years of social cues and expectations to fall back on like Carter did. He followed Ryan out of the alleyway and into the lab, willing the blush from his cheeks; judging by Miss Fairweather’s smirk, he was failing miserably. His stomach shuddered as Ryan went to Miss Fairweather, leaning over her shoulder while she calibrated a shoulder-mounted netting cannon for Dana's zord. Ryan glanced back at him, smiling, and Carter nodded back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, so I wasn't certain if my recipient was down with porn, or not, (fortunately she is!) and the prompt was RIGHT THERE, so I wrote porn and gen. You can view the gen version of the story at ["Not the Ordinary Type"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1017477)


End file.
